Adrift
by AthameMadwe
Summary: Madara's Tsukuyomi is broken, but at an unimaginable cost. In the hollow aftermath, Kakashi is slowly breaking. He doesn't know if he can survive this, but he knows for damn certain he's not letting Sasuke back out of life. But what happens when it all goes wrong, and Kakashi isn't himself anymore? Sasuke learns what it means to be left behind, but is it too late? (Time Travel)
1. Chapter 1

...

 _Adrift_

...

That old bastard was following him again.

Sasuke glanced back over his shoulder through the snapping veil of his ebony hair and frowned. He could just make out the tiny speck of dark behind him. Even through the dual-sovereignty of his penetrating gaze, the man's distant figure was nearly lost. There was an endless sea of white-statuesque and fluid snowdrifts below a spectral deluge of singing ice.

"You can't keep up." He said, "You're going to die in this storm."

Still, he was surprised. It was the closest the poor wretch had gotten in all these long months of chasing him. With the devastating accuracy of both the Sharingan and the Rinnegan; once it was in his sight he knew it- _owned_ it.

He squinted his eyes, adjusting his goggles-sending a silent prayer of thankfulness to the multitude of deities he'd encountered through all of his nomadic travels-and studied the man tailing him.

He could make out the sunken, blackened clouds of exhaustion that ringed that man's eyes. The monotonous, weary swing of frost-bitten limbs through the shifting, treacherous land that was Frost Country. Something about it struck him as undeniably earnest, if not a little pathetic. Sasuke looked away.

None of it mattered anymore. Not for him, at least. Not for very much longer.

The young man wondered transiently. Would it hurt?

He decided it didn't matter.

Sasuke allowed his gaze to drift inwards, into that now-familiar place of detachment and solitude that'd filled the hollow parts of him, and allowed his awareness to stratify.

He would do whatever it took to fix this. He would risk everything if he had to.

Not that he really had much of anything now...

Allowing himself a fleeting rush of gratefulness for the rickety, boat-like snow-shoes the old farmer in Shimogakure had lent him, Sasuke refocused his thoughts and pressed on. Beneath a static whirlwind of shrieking mistral and clawing flecks of ice, he could just make out the lofty mountain up ahead. And, peeking it's steepled side out through the flurrying tempest and currents of overlapping fog, at the very pointed top: the skeletal cheek of a grey, weathered cathedral.

The Ruins of Shasiah.

Sasuke forced himself to hope. He'd spent most of his life chasing someone who hadn't deemed him enough of a threat to even run. Or so he'd thought at the time. Because his chances of success had been so infinitesimally thin. But, that hadn't stopped him then and it wouldn't stop him now. This... This was just another chase.

Another hunt.

And, he'd caught Itachi in the end-Or, perhaps, he had been the one recollected in that moment. Sasuke shivered at the razor-edged memory of that gentle tapping slide-Itachi's fingers tracing that solitary, bloody brushstroke from the center of his forehead down to his chin.

No. He knew nothing was simple.

By the time he'd finally achieved his goal of killing his older brother, it had no longer been the prize he needed. He'd been redirected. Shunted down and egged on another path by the domineering will of power-hungry men.

Wasn't that always the story?

Another tail; another lead to follow. There was always something to be done.

Why should a reclamation of the dead be any different?

Sasuke stared at the Ruins for a long moment. There seemed to be a lost voice screaming through the whipping flutter of snowflakes from all around him, but the young man knew it was just another brush of surfacing memory. Like the bloated rise of a corpse that'd been jostled from it's underwater hold. He listened to it fully, closing his eyes, as he'd learned to do with all things that unsettled him-diving in empty handed with single minded concentration. If only so that he could hurry up to the not thinking about it anymore part.

The Uchiha began his ascent.

...

* * *

...

Miles behind his former student, Kakashi narrowed all of his focus on funneling his chakra into his booted feet.

He crunched forward miserably against the crushing gale of the arctic storm. His breath huffed out a snapping trail behind him, only to be whisked away, dissolving in the sweeping billows of stinging ice-mist.

This had to be one of the worst situations he'd been in for a while; the Copy-Ninja admitted it to himself silently.

But, he had no choice-He had to stop him.

 _Sasuke_...

The trembling in his body seemed to have deadened over the last half hour. Kakashi was fairly certain this was not a good sign. He marched stiffly now, silver hair blowing wildly in several directions over the straight line of his hitae-ate, stinging him in the eyes. The feeling in his legs ended somewhere along the mid-point of his thighs, and his hands had long since gone numb even through the double-layer of woolen gloves he wore. The soft grey lining of fleece that lined the inside of his polyester coat did little to protect him from the monstrous cold.

Everything was white, grey, or some indiscernible gradient between the two. Kakashi ducked his head against the lashing waves of crystallized water. He was so cold it hurt. Like a broken bone, his whole body ached.

Rarely was he ever so unprepared. So helpless.

Staring at nothing but snow for the better part of the last four days had slowly blinded him. Even the miraculous, regenerated eye that Naruto had given him- _Stop. Don't think about that. Don't-_ wasn't enough to penetrate the howling mist.

Yet, even through the wavy afterglow that was his flagging vision, he could make out the sun; scorching like a hurtled streak of captured light across the barren flank of the horizon beside him. It was like some ethereal golden string stretched between himself and Sasuke. Having long lost the useful compass provided to him by the young Hokage (along with the rest of his travel pack) during the avalanche that'd struck-almost conspicuously-at the exact moment he'd left the sloping ridges of Frost Country's mountains behind him-he had only his guts to lead him.

But directing himself was hard when just thinking about the newly elected Nanadaime sent that all too familiar knife-like twist punching through his breast.

 _It should've been you... Naruto._

Kakashi's hushed conversations that he held with the cenotaph-that flat jet of speechless rock-had slowly fallen back into the inner sanctum of his mind.

He spoke with them all as if they were right there with him, nestled and predictably squabbling- _always squabbling_ -within the safe, cushioned folds of his brain. In fact, during that blurry stretch of time before Shikamaru had finally summoned him to the Tower-weeks or months; he didn't know-he'd stopped visiting the memorial completely.

Strangely enough he'd discovered, after a frustrated explanation from the Hokage that'd consisted of an unamused, stony glare and an irritable shove of a box that'd been stuffed to the brim with scribbled sheets of paper, that he had been causing quite a disturbance. Or, to be more exact, Gai had. Because of Kakashi.

Perhaps quite predictably, the man who'd once been known as the Copy-Ninja across the land reasoned, teeth chattering.

He couldn't find it in him to keep up with the man's self-proclaimed challenges anymore.

He couldn't find it in him for a lot of things...

Apparently, after being turned away from the Nanadaime's office several times for "not having a summons" (which was really just another way, Kakashi knew-having been the Rokudaime himself-of avoiding unpleasant interactions); he'd decided on another means of bringing his urgent worries to the Hokage's attention.

He'd gone to Iruka-sensei who-ever since the man had stumbled upon him in the jonin-lounge staring blankly into space as he poured steaming water into his already overflowing tea-cup-had taken to stopping by his apartment sometimes in the evenings when he was "on his way home from the Academy". A bold-faced lie, as Kakashi's apartment was planted on the complete opposite side of the village. But, he had accepted the intrusion, not really having the energy to combat the other's boundless hectoring.

Truly, he pitied the students under Iruka's tutelage.

The man had been relentless.

The first order had been to wake up. Something that'd become increasingly difficult for Kakashi to maintain ever since he'd lost the title of the Copy-Ninja.

Kakashi allowed his flinching eye to close. A shallow relief. Yet, it was easier to walk this way; phantom feet sliding through the frigid tug of the capricious wind and the implacable slew of thick, clogging sleet. He'd finally followed Iruka's indignant orders to shower upon being compared to a ripe durian. The jonin tried to remember what it was to be warm. He imagined taking a shower now-that molten sensation of coursing heat blasting over his head, spraying over his broad shoulders and streaming down his hips and legs-But at best it was a thin apparition.

But, alarmed when the other man had started filing into the narrow bathroom behind him, Kakashi had, in a silent spasm of purely-automatic reflex, slammed the door. Right into the Academy teacher's nose. But, even though he had felt a little bad, it wasn't enough to keep him from closing and locking the door.

Never again. He'd never let another person know him. They took to much of you when they left.

Kakashi stumbled, his left boot slipping deeper into the snow than it should've. He kept walking, ducking his head against the tearing cold.

There wasn't much left of him to take.

 _Sasuke..._

When he'd run into him on his last mission, so out of the blue, in a dingy little miner's colony on the outskirts of Mountain Country, it'd been like seeing a ghost.

The Uchiha had decided to resume his status as a missing-nin after the Fourth Great War. Kakashi hadn't been too surprised. It's not like he'd expected the younger man to feel at home in Konoha-to just come back and pick up the life he'd left as a child.

But, even knowing this; it hadn't been enough to stop the jonin from slipping on a henge and following the last remaining member of Team Seven out the bar... Or from tailing the black-haired young man through the crowded streets. Or spying on the outdoor Ramen Stand- _For you, Naruto, it had to be-_ Sasuke slipped had into from the slippery shingles of the squat butcher's shop roof next door. Or possibly eavesdropping and gleaning distressingly obscure hints of an "ambition" of his old student's that'd been discussed in what could only be some sort of archaic code with a man who'd sat down beside Sasuke and had kept his face hidden behind the soggy folds of an outdated newspaper.

Already having a sizeable respect for the lethality of the solitary Uchiha's ambitions- _What I have is not a dream, because I will make it a reality-_ When Kakashi saw the heavy alabaster scroll the shady man dropped into Sasuke's lap he'd recognized it at once: A suicide scroll.

 _I won't let you_ -Kakashi thought childishly, huffing into the burning frigidity- _I won't let you do this, you stupid boy._

He struggled onwards, even as the smoldering rim of the sun descended into darkness behind the yawning expanse of Frost's horizon.

...

* * *

...

It took nearly all his strength to force the great, elaborately carved stone door open.

Rolling plumes of dust and grit sifted over him like the close of a grave-shroud. Sasuke stepped through into a dark stairwell netted with mist. The wind seemed to be keening; tiny fissures in the ancient cathedral admitted thin tendrils of icy air that nipped and teased the grainy rock-whistling. The hollow spine of the spiral staircase hummed with a barely audible resonance. Eerie and ominous in turn.

Hands damp inside his fur-lined mittens, the Uchiha took the first step upwards. He didn't notice the silent pillars of pale purple smoke that rose, bubbling up from the floor behind him like spectral creatures solidifying in the dark as he passed.

His mind was full of sky-washed blue eyes and candyfloss pink hair.

...

* * *

...

Faint whispers trailed him.

Sasuke stopped, and looked around uneasily.

There was nothing but the stagnant, idle drip of water clinging to the walls; the hollow rattle of the passage below and above him. Shaking it off as nerves, he dipped his head and kept walking.

He came to a narrow door, dusty runes carved into it's stone face. Sasuke rested the flat of his palm to it's core, aligning his fingertips with the spreading rays of archaic runes that branched off in a bizarre pattern of hieroglyphics. He sent a successive burst of chakra pulsing into the door. It swung open with a dry, grinding creak. The room inside was lost in seamless pitch.

Sasuke fished the heavy, bone-white scroll from his cross-shoulder satchel. Gripped it hard in his fist.

He stepped into the darkness alone.

...

* * *

...

Shit. They had company.

Kakashi forced another burst of chakra whizzing through his numb legs, pumping his arms, and pushed against the battering swells of the blizzard, straining to propel himself forwards.

It was like trying to run underwater.

Gaseous ice churned into steaming breath inside his lungs, melting his chest and throat with raw, jagged heat. With every lift of his booted feet, the fierce wind batted him back. Tiny shards of grainy ice stung the exposed skin around his eyes, slitted against the harsh cold of the storm. And it was all he could do not to stop moving, to finally just _succumb_ -Give into the gnawing weight of absence that stippled him like a cancer, rotting him from the inside out like some hidden, decaying tooth.

How long had they been tailing them?

Kakashi stumbled and fell to one knee. He shoved himself back up, staggering, and wheeled pressingly forwards. Ducked his chin into his chest. Elbows swinging.

 _They must be after Sasuke._ He realized with a stab, _The Suicide-Jutsu!_

 _... I'm chasing after a suicidal missing-nin-who publicly rejected me-_ his mind added nastily - _and who may or may not have illegally appropriated a highly treasured religious artifact of what could only be the sacred halls of the living dead. I am insane..._

And he shook himself and charged up the steep hill, racing the elements. Racing the somber unfurl of past mistakes, unhealed losses, and bitter regrets that stretched out like the snapping length of a pennant before- _always just a step before_ -him.

This time he wouldn't fail. He wouldn't lose the last person alive who knew him.

Not again.

 _I'll stop you Sasuke,_ Kakashi heaved into the tearing wind, _E_ _ven if it costs my life._

 _..._

* * *

 _..._

The strange, spiraled end of the scroll-heavy like ivory and twice as white-fit into the divot carved into the stone floor perfectly.

Like it was made for it.

Spreading outwards from the propped up scroll, ornate drawings rippled into being, stringing together in a half-faded pentagram. Sasuke twisted the scroll thirty degrees to the left. Vivid, electric green flames of latent chakra burst into life along the lines set into the floor.

Footsteps clipped a desperate staccato from the bottom of the staircase behind him.

Sasuke, fingers already meshed in the first of the Sacred Time-Jutsu hand-signs, paused. Glanced back over his shoulder sharply.

 _He can't have caught up to me already-_ was all he had time to think before a barrage of genjutsu was launched upon him from nine different locations simultaneously.

"Shit."

The attack wasn't ending. The realization struck Sasuke with a dull sort of horror.

His Sharingan sparked out hot pulses of his chakra for every illusion it broke; barreling through a monsoon of cerebral missiles that drilled into him with the force of tirelessly crashing waves. From nine directions. His brain kept snagging on that thought, swimming in disbelief. He hadn't faced an attack of this level of intensity or lethality since he'd killed Madara.

Every time his Rinnegan burgeoned the skeletal beginnings of his Susanoo, there was a flurry of deadly ninjutsu attacks that were so rapid, callous in their deliberation, he had to keep shifting the fabric of space and time to avoid them.

Stunned, he was led to the fragile realization: he was effectively immobilized.

Trapped.

"Sasuke!"

Out of the corner of his vision he saw Kakashi stumble into the arched threshold. The silver-haired man scudded against a wall, ribs flexing visibly even through his threadbare coat. Cloudy puffs of expelled breath curled over a sharp masked cheek illuminated by the greying light of the storm that'd managed to pry it's way through the tiny cracks and fissures of the grizzled castle walls, giving Kakashi a ghostly sheen. He looked ill and more than a little wobbly.

His sudden inability to catalogue the wild furor of emotions that stampeded through him at the sight of his old teacher brought with it the bizarre urge to cry.

He didn't want to even see Kakashi-He didn't-

"Ah!"

He missed blocking a genjutsu. Garish fireworks of splintering neon light tore through him suddenly with a feeling like molten lead spilling. He missed another. The floor beneath his feet was nothing more than sand-Except it wasn't sand; it was the itchy swarm of a pooling ants rising like a freaking tide over his knees.

"Hold on."

Kakashi's voice was harsh, tense. It shouldn't have filled Sasuke with anything but regret. But he found himself gritting his teeth in a terrible noise that was half sob, half growl.

For, at the sound of the older man's voice, it became clear to him. What he had to do...

It was the only way. This attack was unendurable. He had to activate the Time-Jutsu.

Now.

 _You shouldnt have come-You've ruined everything,_ he allowed himself a brief flash of despair, _You should've just let me go, Kakashi..._

Sasuke gulped air. His hand was still clutching the top of the scroll. He couldn't hold them off much longer. He felt his focus tilting. Serrating.

Shadowy figures that trailed mists of beading purple behind them-they hung and spun in the air like slowly spinning cyclones of dusky ink-danced about him in hellish tandem. There was the guttural hiss of chanting, loose spirals of demonic howling that echoed off the craggy walls of the Ruins. The glow of the pentagram was an emerald heat, ghastly and unnatural beneath him.

Sasuke ground the slotted scroll firmly to the left, twisting it in a full circle. He sent a jettison of chakra flaring down his forearm and into his palm, feeling it draw into the ancient scroll and siphon away into the floor.

"Stop!"

Kakashi yelled. He had a kunai in each hand, swinging like a dervish as he battled the strange, incorporeal attackers. The man was going to get himself killed trying to reach Sasuke.

This was the only chance: for both of them.

 _I was going to go back and save them,_ Sasuke sobbed silently, arm shaking, unable to close his eyes, _I was going to make everything right..._

He dragged his mismatched eyes-the cousin hues of broken promises and divine royalty shining brightly-to Kakashi's determined brunet gaze across the room. Saw the slow turn of recognition flicker dimly in the older man's eyes as Sasuke pinned him with his Rinnegan-seconds before the final activation of the sacred Time-Jutsu.

He hoped his old sensei could read his silent apology.

...

* * *

...

He had just enough time to piece together the weight of Sasuke's dueling stare, to wonder at the cutting edge of _sacrifice_ he saw there-and then his world was coalesced to ribbons of refracting light.

Kakashi's stomach swooped, slamming into his collarbones with a juddering splash. And when his body melted-dropping into itself like the wavering departure of a minuscule droplet of rain leaping from it's temporary perch along the underbelly of some great and immeasurable bridge that spanned from one imperceptible, distant shore to another-he thought he might have screamed.

A flowing pattern of color flowed from him, from everything around him. And, and he didn't have words to describe _this_. It wasn't like the last time he'd died.

He'd seen it coming; _that_ time.

Kakashi felt like some invisible force had hooked him somewhere along the vertebrae of his spine just above his hips, and it was dragging him backwards. His voice bubbled inside him, but it was a mere abstraction of a thought at best-because somehow, unfathomably, someway-he was suddenly, unalterably certain: he'd fallen outside the realm of time itself.

Faces bloomed and burst before his fluttering eyes, each one rolling by him like the fast-forward reel of a flower blooming and dying in an endless loop-fragile seed to withered bud-and the man who'd copied over a thousand jutsu forgot his own name.

When he fell back to the present, he fell through himself; when he landed he held onto nothing but the remembrance of a mortal agony: the piercing look a pair of red and purple eyes.

...


	2. Chapter 2

...

 _Adrift_

...

With a terrific sound like the gnash of rolling thunder, the green light of the pentagram brightened to an unbearable degree and the wavering purple figures spun into a wheeling, chaotic frenzy.

Sasuke winced, instinctively ducking behind a half raised forearm as the stone beneath his feet tremored and shook. The otherworldly chorus of howling voices swelled and whined, heightening to a maddening, nightmarish keening as the power of the scroll was fully unleashed. There was an enormous crack of splitting stone from somewhere high up in the vaulted ceiling. A softly broken cry.

And then, all of a sudden, almost as if someone had punctured a hole in the air and sucked all the noise and color out, the green light and the mysterious chanting shadows vanished. The room cleared and a small rain of grit skittered down belatedly.

It fell over the back and shoulders of a silent, fallen figure laying bonelessly on the floor.

"Kakashi!"

Sasuke coughed, pawing ineffectually at the slow creeping tendrils of mist that'd begun to fill the eerie chamber. He scrambled to his old sensei's side, sliding to his knees and panting with fright.

 _No._ His dark brow furrowed and he reached for the man's shoulder with his heart in his throat. _No, this isn't right._

If the time-travel scroll had worked correctly, then Kakashi shouldn't still _be_ here. In this when, in this timeline at all.

He should've been sent back. Back to before Naruto and Sakura had died, sacrificing their lives trying to bring down Madara and his Infinite Tsukuyomi.

Sasuke held his breath, a feeling colder than the seeping chill of the Ruins sprinkling through him as he gripped the baggy fabric of the silver haired man's shirt and slowly rolled him over. Had he killed him?

Had he just murdered his old, genin sensei?

Kakashi flopped onto his back limply, a slim black gloved hand smacking to the floor-And Sasuke gasped.

 _Wait a second,_ he stumbled mentally, _Hold on._

Something wasn't right.

There was something different about the supine man before him.

The Uchiha ripped off his mittens, casting them carelessly to the side. With almost imperceptibly shaking fingertips, he brushed aside a spill of unruly cloud colored hair that'd fallen over the jonin's sealed eyes. Sasuke frowned, blinking hard. He ran the backs of his knuckles in a slow glide along the side of one masked cheek.

There was a discernible leanness that was noticeable in the sharp, fluid angles of the man's cheekbones and jawline. In the lanky sprawl of his arms and legs... In the slim curve of protruding hipbones that were made uncommonly visible by the recession of Kakashi's loose pants by a few markedly vulnerable inches.

Sasuke's throat suddenly went dry. He coughed again, choking on the dust that still hung foglike in the dim light of the chamber.

This definitely wasn't right.

"Kakashi?"

He murmured, his dark brows creasing worriedly as he checked the man's pulsepoint along the underside of his chin. The Uchiha grabbed one of Kakashi's limp hands, jerked the glove most of the ways down, and flipped it over to check along the inside of the jonin's pale wrist-He froze at the sight of raised, faded pink lines.

There was no denying it for anything but what it was.

Scar tissue.

Ringing the thinnest part of the Copy-Ninja's uncovered wrist-just before the otherwise smooth, unbroken skin flowed into his hand-was an unmistakable cord of ropy scarring. It ran the entire circumference of his wrist and, as Sasuke held it aloft before his Rinnegan and the Sharingan; his omnipotent stare told him the injury had come from some kind of imprisonment.

From being bound too tightly. By razor thin wire that'd been wrapped round several times, it looked like.

Momentarily distracted by the unexpected discovery of an old, hidden injury, Sasuke dropped Kakashi's hand and snatched up his other one. Without thinking, he tugged the glove down and pushed up his coat sleeve, baring the other wrist similarly.

The scarring was almost identical. Which told the dark haired youth that, in all likelihood, it'd been caused by having both wrists bound together so roughly it was hard to imagine such violence would have been consensual.

Had Kakashi always had these scars on his wrists?

Sasuke couldn't remember.

Most of the recollections he had of Kakashi from his younger, genin-team days were washed out by his own obsessive fixation of vengeance and restoring honor to his fallen clan. It shamed him quietly to realize that, out of every member of his team, he'd never really given that much thought to Kakashi in particular. Sakura and Naruto had seemed to him a distraction at best-and an exasperation at worst. But, Kakashi...

Kakashi had been harder to place.

So, prepubescent Sasuke had sort of reflexively parried away any needling curiosity once it'd become blatantly obvious that the masked man would never really allow them to learn anything about him. Only from him.

What other scars did the enigmatic, aloof jonin hide away? Behind those squinty-eyed almost smiles, dry exhalations that barely passed for laughter, and the reluctant tousling of grey, unruly locks whenever anyone asked anything even remotely personal.

The more he thought about it, Sasuke had no idea who his old sensei was at all.

The realization was frustrating, and-faced with a steadily growing sense of something being not quite _right_ about the unconscious Copy-ninja-Sasuke couldn't put his finger on exactly what it was about the man that was different. It was like trying to put a puzzle together without all the pieces. Frustration gave way to a low, grumbling anger.

"What is it..." he murmured to himself with a deep frown, turning Kakashi's chin first one way then the other, "What did I do to you? What-"

-And then he remembered.

The criss cross of scars that would be freshly healed along the front of his old teacher's abdomen and chest. From his last fight with Obito. If this was still Kakashi, and not some freakish clone that was ever so slightly different from the original, then he would still have those scars.

Feeling a strange, rosy cousin of dread, Sasuke bit his lip in indecision. It went against everything in him to do this, especially because the man wasn't even awake right now, but for some strange reason he knew he had to check. Check if the scars on Kakashi's chest were still there.

Check if he was really Kakashi.

Sasuke grabbed the man's green flak jacket, jammed the zipper down. Shoved it open to the sides. He took hold of the jonin's loose, navy-blue shirt hem. Peeled it up, up past the taut ripple of a hairless belly, the distinct-almost fragile-stack of prominent rib bones, and the toned muscles of an adolescent chest. Sasuke's breath caught. His hand slowed.

The dark fabric lifted away from pale, unblemished skin.

 _No scars..._ Sasuke's eyes widened, _His scars are gone!_

His hand continued to move in shock, the billowy shirt balling in his suddenly shaking fist. It continued to slide from his sensei's skin, parting from the dewy contours of collarbones so defined they were practically jagged-Up, up, along the smooth column of a slender neck whose adam's apple bobbed tensely when Kakashi swallowed.

 _Wait-_

-Sasuke's stare snapped up to Kakashi's face. Shot back down to the bared expanse of a chest that seemed to be holding it's breath in nervousness. Then back up to Kakashi's face, taking in the naked fright he saw shining back at him from a pair of mismatched red and black eyes.

Sasuke's mouth dropped open.

"What in the-"

 _That's a Sharingan. Kakashi has his Sharingan back._

The Uchiha continued to stare dumbly, unmittened hand still pinning the majority of the silver haired man's shirt to the floor in a ball of crumpled fabric next to he fluttering pulse of the jonin's neck. Struggling to make sense of what he was seeing.

Kakashi's strange, unevenly colored stare - so like Sasuke's own, but somehow more primal, more accessible because of the disparity in power between the Sharingan and his natural, jejune eye - followed his gaze almost obediently as the Uchiha scanned the length of the jonin's pinned frame up and down.

Breath rattled in a shaky exhale from Kakashi when Sasuke's penetrating gaze slid over his exposed chest, belly, and the top half of his hips. Hips that gave a shy little almost squirm the instant the Uchiha's cabalistic stare touched them. The movement brought the grey elastic band of what could only be Kakashi's underwear peeking out helplessly, and it was in that moment that several things became inescapably apparent to Sasuke.

This wasn't Kakashi.

It wasn't his old sensei looking back at him now, silver brows lilted inwards in a remarkably poignant expression of anxiety-mismatched red and black eyes blinking through the sleepy winged slant of silver frosted eyelashes and scattered wisps of snowy hair.

This was some teenaged version of the man, gulping audibly as the sleek lines of his belly dipped and flexed as he struggled to control his breathing. His slender body naked beneath Sasuke's straddling legs from his hips up to almost his chin. The bridge of his nose and the tops of his cheeks glowing pink in a blush that had begun to creep from the cover of his dark mask and color the tips of his ears too.

And, he was-there was no other word for it- _magnetic_.

The hand Sasuke had balled in the silver haired youth's shirt shook-and, looking down at the heated uncertainty of Kakashi's eyes, the fascinating dance of his bared stomach as it staggered with the lurch of his unsteady breathing-the Uchiha was suddenly struck by a bizarre and powerful desire to let his hand just... keep traveling.

To just... move that knotted bunch of navy fabric higher... just a little bit higher. Until the shirt rolled over the sharp edge of his sensei's jaw, the obscured aquiline novelty of his face, and the tumultuous flop of his feathery light hued hair. Sasuke's eyes flickered helplessly down to the silver haired teens hips again and some terrible, terrible, secretly cruel, painfully useless part of his mind was already imagining the way it would look if those lofty hips were to squirm again. To squirm and writhe frantically beneath him, working their way inch by inch free from the confines of his trousers.

And the impermanence... Sasuke swallowed. The utter impermanence of the placement of that thin elastic band that held up the soft, dark grey cotton of Kakashi's underwear. He imagined how that would look too.

Hated himself for it.

"What..." The sound of Kakashi's voice shocked him. How soft it was. Young. Low in a way that was reminiscent of his older self, but clearer somehow. Less weary. Or maybe more so. It was hard to pinpoint how, with just one word, Sasuke could almost taste every solitary note of sadness and apathy that flavored the energy of the simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar creature trapped beneath him.

Sasuke rolled off him in a flash, whipping around so that all the silver haired boy could see of him was his back. Struggled to collect himself, his own breath quaking a little as he shook the unsafe thoughts from his head.

 _What the hell,_ he swiped angrily at a bead of sweat dripping along his hairline, _How did_ this _fucking happen?_

Kakashi groaned. Like he'd fallen from some great height and all the air had been knocked out of him. Which, all things considering, wasn't too surprising really. Sasuke heard him roll onto his side. The sound of clothes being adjusted hastily.

"What's going on?"

Sasuke turned his head slightly, taking in Kakashi from the periphery of his vision. The boy-and there was no doubt about it now; Kakashi was not the same age that he had been when he'd first stepped foot into the Ruins of Shasiah-his strange and polarizing gaze was riveted on Sasuke with not a small amount of distress tightening the skin around his eyes.

The silver haired teen had propped himself up with one hand. He clutched protectively at the loose waistline of his pants with the other.

"Who-" Kakashi's voice shook a little and he took a deep, forcefully slow breath before trying again. Sasuke lifted his gaze and their eyes connected. Both of them widening before Sasuke tore his away, cursing quietly under his breath.

 _Shit._

"Who _are_ you?" The tinge of fear in the voice of his old sensei-now young, maybe even younger than Sasuke himself-was impossible not to hear.

 _He doesn't remember me._

"You don't remember?" Sasuke stood up and gathered his mittens from the floor. His mind was spinning. Unable to gain traction.

 _What..._ The Rinnegan-user squeezed closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, frowning, _What the hell is going on?_

"N-No."

Sasuke stilled in the middle of pulling one of his mittens back on. Shot a disbelieving, searching look at the silver haired boy hunched and hugging his knees together on the stone floor behind him. No way.

Kakashi stared back at him in such a way that could only be described as uncertain.

"You stuttered."

Immediately the pink flush from before was back, this time blooming behind the edge of the teenager's mask like an freshly daubed watercolor painting. And, there was absolutely no reason why Sasuke's eyes were drawn to the indentation between Kakashi's masked lips. No fucking reason at all.

Silver brows flattened, a furiously dangerous look glinting in the slit disharmony of Kakashi's eyes. With it came a barreling wave of killing intent so lethal it was like ice barbed daggers poised menacingly behind a molten chain of white hot mesh.

Sasuke quite suddenly got the impression that he should choose his next words carefully. Very carefully indeed.

"Nevermind." He said after a beat, part of him still struggling to digest the fact that something had gone impossibly wrong with the time-jutsu and that _this_ -of all the unexpected possibilities-was what had come of it, "It's not safe here. We have to move."

'Now.' he added after a beat of dubious silence.

This strange, too silent version of his old sensei was becoming just a little unsettling. Sasuke found himself gritting his teeth when the boy simply continued to stare up at him inscrutably, pulling the too big folds of his raggedy coat tighter around himself.

"Why should I trust you?"

Kakashi's words were hushed. Hard, deflective anger balled tight around a tiny splinter of fear that Sasuke picked up on almost too easily.

Sasuke knelt down before him. Fixed the purple and red clash of his stare steadily on the silver-haired boy. Wind whistled and clawed itself against the eroded walls of the old cathedral around them.

He sighed. Held out a hand palm upwards with a rueful shake of his ebony locks.

"I'm sorry... You don't have another option."

...

* * *

...

He stared at the mittened hand held open expectantly before him.

The boy debated with himself, his hands clenching tighter at the clothes swimming around him as his thoughts squiggled together like knotted clumps of yarn. He felt uprooted. Unsafe.

Untethered. Adrift and groundless.

Like a carcass that'd been split open and gutted, every clue to his own story had been taken from him. Stolen. And he'd been left behind, forsaken.

Scared didn't cover it.

He wasn't really sure yet, but he thought he might actually be sick-he was so fucking _frightened_.

Somehow... In some otherworldly way that he couldn't even begin to explain-He had been emptied.

Scrubbed clean.

Eradicated completely.

However all his memories were stored; whatever elusive and abstract nest that they'd made for themselves within the uncharted depths of his skull-they had abandoned him entirely without so much as a parting glance.

Migrated to greener pastures. So to speak...

He could've laughed it was all so fucking ridiculous.

Something.. Something had happened. Something wrong. Of that he was sure-Something that had thrown everything out of wack and left him feeling like an immigrant in his own body. Out of his depth.

Lost.

Leagues and leagues away: he was disconnected. Internally severed, maybe even irreparably broken in some pivotal, fundamental way that he didn't have the words to frame.

Nothing. Nothing made sense-Not a damn fucking thing.

And, the more he kept circling back to it, the more it stung. The absence...

He couldn't remember his own name.

This realization brought a deeply wrung, and overwhelmingly complex feeling of shame with it. Illogical and pathetic. What was wrong with him? Why was he like this? Why-

"Calm down."

The stranger with the different colored eyes was staring at him meaninfully. Those eyes... The boy shivered, and whether it was from the cold that'd begun to seep in through the layers of his clothes or from the intensity of that piercing, paradoxical gaze, he couldn't say.

He remembered those eyes...

Deep, deep purple. Purple so deep it was almost another color. And red. Red the color of blood. Or roses-he couldn't tell which.

Those eyes were the only thing he could recall before... before coming to, lying belly up on the cold ground with his clothes all wrong and the nameless stranger with the eyes of a god-or maybe a demon-boring down into his own.

The boy felt his mouth set into a decisive line behind the tight, stifling fabric that covered most of his face.

Fabric he suddenly found to be oppressive. Suffocating almost.

Black gloved fingertips brushed at the mask covering his face tentatively. What? Why was he dressed like this?

The boy frowned, the cycle of his breath jilting a little. Panicking. He was panicking.

"Kakashi." The stranger said, "You need to slow down."

'You're hyperventilating.'

The boy shook his head once, his silvery white hair lifting a little with the frantic motion. His shoulders dropped and raised with his panting, gloved hands coming up to cradle the sides of his head.

A raw, choked sounding sort of sob burst up from his chest and fell out of him. Somehow hearing himself cry made it even worse.

"Where am I?" He gasped, eyes wide-his vision a confusing splice of slow moving images all layering over themselves and bleeding into one another like the shades of a brushstroke, "Where..."

"Take it _easy_." The black haired stranger with the odd colored eyes growled in a tense approximation of a comforting reassurance, "We have to go. They seem to have left, but I have a feeling they'll be back."

"They?" The boy struggled to slip the word out between half-filled breaths and it came out sounding small and frightened. His stomach twisted hotly within him, sweat collecting suddenly on his face and neck under the collar of his coat.

All of a sudden there was an earsplitting crack from somewhere above their heads. A thick curtain of chipped stone and frosty dust fell over them in a sheet.

The boy startled. Shot up like a spring had been planted under him. He bolted in a mad dash for the only exit he saw, coughing as he batted at the cloud of dust, cupping at his nose and mouth with one hand.

As he made it out into the eerie, dimly lit hallway, heart pumping loudly in his ears like a skipping stone, he thought he heard the stranger call out after him again.

...

* * *

...

"Kakashi!"

Sasuke croaked through the swirls of clogging dust, hesitating for only a hair's breadth of a second before pelting after him.

"Kakashi, wait!"

But it was useless. The strange imposter, whoever this younger version of Kakashi Hatake was, was already out the door and sprinting away.

"Dammit!"

Sasuke slid into the hallway just as the top of the Copy-ninja's tufty grey head disappeared down the first loop of the giant spiraled staircase. If he didn't get to him in time there was no telling what trouble he'd get into.

Still feeling drained from defending himself against the unearthly barrage of genjutsu attacks he'd barely been able to fend off earlier, and from activating the Time-Jutsu - or whatever the hell it was - it took Sasuke a fraction of a second longer than it should've for him to catch up.

Kakashi had cornered himself at the end of a narrow, poorly lit hallway. Sasuke stepped into the passage slowly, blocking the only possible exit from reach.

"Would you just stop for a second?" he tried to conceal his frustration but, judging by the wide eyed look of panic the silver haired boy sent his way, he must've failed miserably.

The Uchiha sighed. Forced himself to adopt a softer tone. He raised his mittens loosely by his sides as a signal that he meant no harm and he began to advance towards the skittish boy slowly.

"I don't know what is going on." he spoke the words carefully, "I'm just as confused as you, are-"

"-Somehow," the younger version of his sensei panted, inching away from him uneasily, "Somehow, I seriously. _Seriously_. Doubt that."

There was something just a little bit broken about the way those words were said, and it stopped the Rinnegan user in his tracks.

"Kakashi..." Sasuke heard himself pleading. Something he never would've pictured himself doing before.

"Don't!" There were tears spilling silently now from the other's stolen Sharingan, and Sasuke stiffened at the peculiar sensation of guilt that twisted like a knifeblade deep in the center of his gut.

'Don't _call_ me that! I..." Kakashi weaved on his feet, the air rasping through his lungs so fast he couldn't be getting enough oxygen, "I don't know why you keep... calling me... that-"

"Hey!"

Sasuke tried to cry out a warning as the frightened, younger version of a man he'd once thought to be emotionless staggered unwillingly close to a busted out window. The poor kid was so upset he couldn't even keep his balance.

"Watch-"

But it was too late. With an odd little flutter of his pale lashes that sent Sasuke's stomach pooling somewhere around his knees, Kakashi wobbled once, twice-and then his knees gave out abruptly from beneath him, and he tilted backwards, slipping. Sasuke jolted forwards, scrambling to reach him, but his mittened hands clasped at empty air the instant Kakashi fell out through the busted window, tumbling head over heel.

"NO!"

Sasuke roared, leaning as far out after him as he dared. Horror blustered through him, sending his focus careening in a haze as his eyes scanned the outside of the Ruins desperately for any sign of the Copy-ninja.

The Rinnegan and Sharingan zeroed in on a large, human-sized hole that broke the ice of what appeared to be a small, frozen lake at the base of the cathedral.

His heart sprung into his mouth, bitter and dry and out of sync entirely.

...

* * *

...


End file.
